Saturday, February 7, 2015

Ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill, along with gun control advocates
from the Newtown Alliance, pledged to renew a federal prohibition on
magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.

The legislation, to be introduced this week to both chambers
Congress, aims to once again ban the importation, sale, manufacture,
transfer, or possession of so-called large capacity magazines.

“There is no place in our communities for ammunition magazines
designed for military-style shootouts, which have been used inside Sandy
Hook Elementary School, in Aurora, in Fort Hood, and in Tucson – and it
is well-past time for Congress to listen to the American people and put
this high-capacity magazine ban back in place,” said Sen. Bob Menendez,
D-New Jersey, sponsor of the legislation, in an official statement.

The proposed measure would reinstate a portion of the decade-long
Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004. That ban’s legacy
has been upheld as a success by lawmakers who championed it while most criminologists point out that its effect on crime was negligible.

The bill, officially termed the Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act,
uses expansive language to deem almost all conventional magazines that
can accept more than 10 cartridges illegal. This would include not only
traditional box magazines, but also any, “belt, drum, helical feeding
device, or similar…” than can be converted or made to accept more than
the allowed round limit. A host of exceptions for the military, law
enforcement, and nuclear power plant security guards among others are
included. The only type of firearm excluded from the ban would be .22LR
caliber rifles with tubular magazines.

Feeding devices made before the ban is implemented would be
grandfathered and those made after the law takes effect would be marked
and dated.

Now, with the city promising to prosecute him if he uses it, and a
series of increasingly violent threats, the would-be target shooter has
dismantled his range.

“I’ve gotten death threats out of this. People threatening to ‘SWAT’
my house, blowing it up with a bazooka,” Carannante told the Tampa Bay Times. “It’s been kind of scary. Sleeping with one eye open.”

It sounds to me like the only real threat was that of the city "promising to prosecute him if he uses it." He certainly doesn't sound like any gun rights advocate that we're familiar with, caving in over a few threats by the neighbors. And, interestingly, the ABC video report made no mention of the supposed threats by irate neighbors.

It all started about five years ago, when a group of Pennsylvania
cities, frustrated with the difficulty of getting gun-law reforms passed
in the Republican-controlled state legislature, started passing laws
and ordinances on their own. Their highest priority was requiring gun
owners to report lost or stolen guns—a law that was intended to make it
harder for gun traffickers to claim, after a crime gun was traced back
to them, that the gun had been lost or stolen before the crime was
committed. Most of the states bordering Pennsylvania had such a law, but
it was going nowhere in Harrisburg. Eventually, more than 100 towns and
cities passed the requirement. “The state was not taking any action on
it and by putting together support at the grassroots level and showing
that mayors and council could take action, we hoped it would compel
action at the state level,” says Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, who was
on the city council at the time. “It’s the grassroots level that brings
change to state capitals and then Washington, D.C.”

Such laws are anathema to the gun lobby, which argues they violate
the Fifth Amendment’s bar against self-incrimination, since reporting a
lost or stolen gun might implicate someone for other violations.
Gun-rights advocates have also been peeved over another set of
ordinances passed by Pennsylvania towns, banning guns from parks or
other public areas, as well as by laws passed by Philadelphia that,
among other things, limit assault weapons and gun ownership for
domestic-violence abusers. Gun-rights groups argue that most of the
local laws are in violation of a 1974 state law that bars municipalities
against passing restrictions that are pre-empted by state gun laws. But
they have had trouble getting the laws overturned, because that
requires finding someone who can show injury from the laws to bring a
lawsuit challenging them.

So the gun lobby got the state legislature to change the rules of the
game. Late last year, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed a bill, loosely
modeled on a Florida law, to make it possible for any state resident or any gun-rights group to which they belong to challenge local gun laws in court.
The law, Act 192, is an explicit carve-out for gun-rights groups from
customary legal procedures—challenges of school-prayer restrictions, for
instance, are typically brought by actual students who can show that
their rights have been infringed by the restrictions. Not only that, but
the law requires that towns and cities pay the legal fees of any
plaintiffs who successfully challenge their gun laws in court.

In other words, the NRA, with its headquarters in northern Virginia
and annual revenues well above $200 million, can sue towns and cities,
and expect them to pay its costs if it wins.

In recent weeks, the White House has reaffirmed its commitment
to strengthening "community policing" around the country. The U.S.
Conference of Mayors has coalesced around the same theme, releasing a report
days ago with recommendations for community policing measures to be
adopted nationally. The suggestions for building better "relationships"
and boosting "trust" are comprehensive but, for a national crisis
brought on by the killing of unarmed black people, there's one thing
conspicuously absent from the public policy solutions: the
acknowledgement of racism.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

The family of a 65-year-old Washington state
woman who was grazed in the head by a bullet says they can’t prove it
came from the neighboring shooting range, but a metal detector turned up
more than a pound of bullets in their yard.

Linda Sperling, of Brush Prairie, is still recovering from a
concussion. She considers herself lucky the bullet didn’t do more damage
when she was hit on 26 January while in her yard.

Sperling heard what sounded like an explosion, put her hand to her head and found blood on her gardening glove.

She was rushed to a hospital, where doctors told her a bullet had entered and exited her scalp, The Columbian reported Monday.

“I didn’t even realize I’d been shot,” Sperling said. “What if it was a quarter-inch deeper?”

Sperling’s husband and son believe she was hit by a stray bullet from
the Clark Rifles outdoor shooting range. The gun club has two rifle
ranges and a handgun range, according to its website. One of those
300-yard rifle ranges points toward the Sperlings’ property.

Clark Rifles’ vice-president, Dave Christie, said there’s no proof the bullet came from the range.“We know about no rounds that left the range,” he said.

A 38-year-old woman has died after she apparently shot herself in the stomach while cleaning a gun, police say.

Mountain
Home PD says officers were called out to a home on Rockridge Drive
Wednesday morning for a report of a shooting. Officers found the woman
unresponsive, not breathing and bleeding heavily from her abdomen.

She
was taken to St. Lukes hospital where she later died from her injuries.
Officers say she was on the phone with a relative attempting to clean
the gun when the shooting occurred. No foul play is suspected.

Now, if this woman had had a concealed carry permit, do you think her demise would damage the incredible permit holder record?

Flagler County deputies on Tuesday responded to a home in Palm Coast to investigate a shooting.

When
deputies arrived on scene, they found 18-year-old Shane Huber, a
resident of the home, conscious and alert with a single gunshot wound to
his neck. Huber was flown by the county's Fire Flight to Halifax
Medical Center in Daytona Beach.

Detectives looking into the
incident reported that Huber was showing his Romania .762X39 mm AK-47
rifle to a friend. Huber handed the rifle to his friend, who believing
the rifle was not loaded, pulled the trigger firing the rifle striking
Huber.

Detectives believe the shooting was an accident. No one else was in the home at the time of the incident.

A man who told police that he accidentally shot a friend through the
seat of a car Friday after he dropped a gun was charged Tuesday with
first-degree reckless injury.

Christopher L. Jackson Jr., 20, of
Fitchburg, also was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and
possession of a firearm by a person adjudged delinquent of a felony.

According
to a criminal complaint, Jackson was in the back seat of a car in the
parking lot of Auto Zone, 4627 Verona Road, when, he told police, he
dropped a gun he was carrying, causing it to go off when it hit the
floor of the car. He denied pulling the trigger on the gun, the
complaint states.

According to the complaint:

Jackson told
police that after the gun went off, his friend Adonis Sarrios-Reyes, 20,
who was struck by a bullet, screamed and told Jackson, “You shot me
bro,” and asked him to call an ambulance.

But Jackson said he was
“panicking,” and told the driver of the car, Darryl Gobermann, to call
the ambulance because he had to leave. Jackson ran, but was arrested a
short time later by Fitchburg police.

A 9-year-old girl was injured in a shooting early Tuesday evening on
the northwest side of Indianapolis, officials with Indianapolis
Metropolitan Police Department said.

The incident happened in a neighborhood near North Michigan and Westlane roads.

Neighbors say they saw two suspects — one wearing a hooded sweatshirt
and the second with dreadlocks — pull up to the side of the Retreat
Cooperative apartment complex in a green or blue Expedition. Neighbors
described a hand with a glove reach out of the vehicle.

After the Expedition pulled up, neighbors say shots were heard.
Police say the 9-year-old girl started running and was hit in the calf.
She was transported to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health in
stable condition.

According to the child’s family, she was selling Girl Scout cookies when she was shot.

Besides, relative to the other states that lead the nation in gun
deaths, Louisiana's gun-ownership rate is low. With a 45.6 percent rate
of household gun ownership, Louisiana trails Wyoming, Mississippi and
Alabama. Yet it has more gun deaths than all of them.

So, assuming the accuracy of the figures the Violence Policy Center
is using, there's something other than the mere presence of guns that's
driving deaths from guns.

What is it? I'm sure folks here - at least when they feel safe in
doing so - would say that it's the presence of black people that drives
up the rate of gun deaths. But there aren't many black folks in Alaska -
only 3.9 percent. And black people make up only 1.7 percent of the
population in Wyoming, the state that rounds out the top five in gun
deaths. The presence of those two states on the list should help us talk
about guns and gun deaths in a way that doesn't fixate on supposed
black pathology.

6) Physical barriers to suicide have been shown to work and so can conceptual ones

Studies show that when we put up a barrier fence on a bridge famous for suicides, the people who go there to jump do not go to another bridge.
Bridge barriers lower the real, overall suicide rate. That is why we
are finally putting up a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge — as a chorus
of experts in various fields explained, suicide barriers save lives.
The act is so impulsive that most of the time people do not seem to
plan ahead enough to find a backup bridge and make sure it is climbable
and high enough to do the job.

In the 1990s the United Kingdom was seeing a lot of suicide by
acetaminophen overdose, so they legislated that the drug had to be sold
in smaller quantities. Deaths by acetaminophen overdose fell significantly.
The number of overdoses stayed constant, but far fewer were fatal.
People survived because the act is so impulsive that they only ingest
what is in the house, so smaller bottles save lives.

In the US over half the gun deaths
are suicides and over half the suicides involve guns. Having immediate
means is bad. If you are looking after yourself, see that it would at
least take you a few hours and a bit of effort and human interaction. I
have heard from several men and women who store their guns in someone
else's home for this reason.

The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
said suicide is always a rushing of one's defenses, and added that
there is nothing worse than rushing your defenses. Wittgenstein felt
suicidal off-and-on his whole life and three of his four brothers
committed suicide, but he had worked out reasons suicide was wrong and
he didn't do it. As a rule, we cannot usefully tell ourselves not to be
depressed, but it seems that we can usefully tell ourselves not to
commit suicide.

After a protracted deliberation that spanned two meetings of the
Board of Trustees, the Board’s Executive Committee has decided not to
adopt a recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) that the University divest from civilian firearms manufacturers.

Robert Knox (CAS’74, GSM’75), chair of the Board of Trustees and of
the Executive Committee, described the deliberation as “a big sprawling
discussion that reflected a full spectrum of opinions.” When the Board
did not find the “overwhelming consensus” required to support the
proposal, the issue was referred to the Board’s 14-member Executive
Committee, which determined that it should not be adopted.

The recommendation that “Boston University will prohibit new and
divest of any existing direct investments in civilian firearm
manufacturers until, in the University’s judgment, a level of state
and/or federal regulatory control over firearm sale and/or ownership is
achieved that merits repeal of this policy” is the first proposal to the
Board from the ACSRI, which was established two years ago as an
interface between the BU community and the Board of Trustees. The
trustees first discussed divestment from gun manufacturers in the wake
of the shooting of 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012, before the ACSRI has
been established. The issue was brought to the Board by the ACSRI in May
of last year, and was the subject of comprehensive debate at Board
meetings in September and December.

Wait till a few wealthy liberal alumni learn about this. Donations will plummet and the board will reconsider.

Colorado Republican leaders have begun a legislative push to repeal
recently passed gun control measures, reigniting one of the most intense
political debates in recent history.

The first advance came
Monday as discussion started on several measures in each chamber. One of
the most prominent measures — a longshot bill that would undo expanded
background-check requirements on private and online sales — was passed
by a Senate committee.

Colorado,
with Democrats in control of both chambers of state government and the
governor's office at the time, was one of the only states to pass
changes, including a measure limiting the size of ammunition magazines
and another that expanded background-check requirements. But it came at
great political cost. Two Democratic state senators were recalled over
their support for the restrictions, and a third resigned as a campaign
to oust her was mounting.

Republicans have maintained that the
legislation is ineffective and burdensome to enforce, and they have made
it a priority to go after the measures.

Monday's debates are the
start of what is expected to be a session-long push by GOP leaders
seeking to flex their new Senate muscle and pick up enough Democratic
support in the House to make several changes.

The
measure faces several legislative hurdles before it could become law
and will face stiff opposition in the Democrat-led House. If it does
pass, Gov. John Hickenlooper would be likely to veto it.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

And now the FBI reports that during the first six months of 2014–the
first six months that all these new guns were in the hands of
Americans–“offenses” in the categories of violent crimes and property crimes decreased.

In other words, More guns correlated with less crime in the first half of 2014.

According to the FBI, “murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape…aggravated assault, and robbery” all showed decreases when the first six months of 2014 were juxtaposed with the first six months of 2013. Murder fell by “6 percent,” rape by “10.1 percent,” aggravated assault dropped “1.6 percent,” and robbery fell by “10.3 percent.”

Offenses of property crime–“burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft”–all decreased during the first six months of 2014 as well, when contrasted with the first six months of 2013. Burglary fell “14 percent,” larceny-theft fell “5.6 percent,” and motor vehicle thefts fell “5.7 percent.”

Former Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle was fatally shot along with another man Saturday on a Texas gun range, a sheriff told local newspapers.

Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant said Kyle, 38, and a second man were found dead at Rough Creek Lodge's shooting range west of Glen Rose, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Stephenville Empire-Tribune. Glen Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

This
is the first documented murder that took place at a gun range that I
have ever been able to find. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or
later.

This is the trouble with criminals: we (the good guys)
never know when they (criminals) will attack. All we can do is react
which means criminals will always have the advantage. And since the bad
guys always have the advantage, we need as many good guys as possible
that can respond to such an event.

My preferred response to such
an event is to be armed so I can defend myself and my family. Being
armed certainly does not guarantee that I will prevail. Being armed
guarantees that I have more options and much better odds when someone
goes bad and lashes out.

My
best guess is that he was surprised. It happens. I had friends in the
military who were as highly skilled and trained as Mr. Kyle who are no
longer with us because they were surprised, or their equipment
malfunctioned, or they were outnumbered, etc. Likewise, I know people
who were never in the military and who are alive today only because they
had a firearm when it was desperately needed.

When I was in the
USCG I carried a weapon while boarding suspected drug boats and ships
(actually, for all boardings), even though we were taught that if the
bad guys wanted to kill us badly enough they were almost guaranteed to
succeed. Why, then, the weapons? Because they increased our chances of
survival. Did they provide an impenetrable shield? Of course not. That
there are no absolute guarantees of safety or success does not mean
people should be deprived of their right to self defense or the means to
exercise that right.

-(Ammoland.com)-
Property owner Miodrag Burgacic defended himself and his property one
too many times in crime ridden Cleveland. He has shot people who were
attempting to steal from him twice before, and been able to hold people
without shooting them at least once. No charges were filed in those
incidents. From theblaze.com:

Miodrag Bugarcic seems to attract criminals like a magnet.
But because the Cleveland businessman has used firearms to thwart
crimes on his property multiple times — once with lethal results — why
crooks keep trying to rip him off is anybody’s guess.

After the third shooting, which happened on February 13th of last
year, police found that Bugarcic shot at the burglary suspect as he
fled. From 19actionnews.com:

A plea deal for shooting and wounding a
man he said he’d found stealing wire in an empty old industrial building
he owns on Cleveland’s east side.Cuyahoga county prosecutors say Bugarcic shot the guy coming in to the warehouse, then twice more running away.

That seems to be the basis for the assault charge. Bugarcic faces
time in prison, but I do not know the details of the plea bargain. But
now that he has plead guilty, he will have a felony conviction for
assault. He will not be able to legally own a firearm. There might be
credit for time served, or probation. From 19actionnews.com:

Bugarcic faces two to eight years in prison. The price he’ll pay for protecting his property but going too far.

Within a 48-hour period, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick first said the time
wasn’t right for gun reform legislation then praised a campus carry
measure while backpedaling to explain his comments.

The confusion began Tuesday when Patrick, who made promises
during his election campaign to support a pro-gun agenda, told local
media that the state legislature, which began its session earlier this
month, had priorities other than passing bills to expand open carry
rights in the Lone Star State.

“Second Amendment rights are very important, but open carry has not
reached the level of being prioritized at this point,” Patrick said
during a Texas Tribune event. “I don’t think the votes are there.”

Within hours, gun control advocates such as the Coalition to Stop Gun
Violence, who urged members to contact Patrick with notes of support, celebrated his comments.

Everytown for Gun Safety,
a gun control group financed by former New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, has gone into mea culpa mode for claims it made about
firearms dealers that turned out to be wrong — and that may lead at
least one to file a lawsuit.

The group issued a report a few days
ago that said more than 1,000 online gun ads in Vermont were posted by
unlicensed dealers and therefore, leading potential buyers to bypass
background checks. But Everytown for Gun Safety wrongly identified 48 ads by dealers.

At least one misidentified Vermont dealer — Bobby Richards, owner and
operator of CrossFire Arms in Mount Holly — is threatening a lawsuit,
The Blaze reported.

Mr.
Richards, who advertises firearms sales at the online venue Armslist,
said he requires every potential buyer to fill out a Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Form 4473 and undergo a screening by
the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System, The Blaze
reported.

Hahahahahahaha. Bloomberg is laughing as hard as I am. Of course this nonsense comes from the conservative rag The Washington Times and the conservative web site, The Blaze (Glenn Beck is well known for his honest portrayals).

What it boils down to is that Everytown said 1,000 and it's really 952.

Kentucky gun owners can obtain concealed-carry permits faster under a new online application process that critics view as dangerous but others say pays heed to Second Amendment rights.

The
process requires state police to either issue or deny a license within
15 days of receiving an electronic application — down from the 60-day
processing period allowed for paper applications.

Rep. Jim Wayne, a Louisville Democrat opposed to the new rules, says
state police are already hurting for personnel and that having officials
process applications within 15 days could result in mistakes, such as
approving permits for people with criminal histories.

"They are so overloaded and they should have the leeway to not be pressed to get this job done," he said.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has pledged to introduce legislation on
police accountability following the dismissal of charges against a
Detroit police officer who fatally shot a 7-year-old girl.

On Friday, the case was dropped against Officer Joseph Weekley
in the 2010 death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was killed during a
botched police raid while she was sleeping in the couch. Conyers
released a statement Saturday saying the decision was unlikely to end
the controversy over the incident.Joseph Weekley as star on previous AE DETROIT SWAT website cropped

Weekley was first through the door shortly after midnight during the
2010 raid in search of a murder suspect, and shot Aiyana shortly after a
flash-bang grenade was thrown. A television crew was filming the incident for a reality show about murder investigations, raising questions about police procedure for the raid.

The
circumstances of the shooting were disputed at two trials -- Weekley
maintained Aiyana’s grandmother had touched his gun, which she denied --
that both ended in a mistrial.
At the second trial in October, the judge granted a motion to dismiss
the involuntary manslaughter charge, leaving just the charge of careless
discharge of a firearm causing death or injury, a misdemeanor that
carries a 2-year maximum sentence.

New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver
has been arrested on a five-count federal complaint charging him with
accepting millions of dollars in exchange for using his political
influence, New York Daily News reported Thursday. The charges are described as “stunning” for “the Manhattan Democrat [who has been] a state political fixture for decades.”

As such, Silver has been a leading proponent of “gun control”
throughout his terms of office, including being a driving force behind
passing Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “SAFE” Act. In 2012, Silver pushed
through a package of bills after the Sandy Hook killings, using that as
the springboard to enact legislation that had failed to be enacted in
prior years, including microstamping, gun locks and “closing loopholes.”
He stated his post-Newtown goal flatly, to impose “a complete ban on assault weapons.”

Silver’s arrest is reminiscent of other arrests for criminal acts
that prominent citizen disarmament-demanding politicians have made
headlines with in recent years, including numerous members of Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns.” Other anti-gun pols charged with serious criminal activity include California State Senator Leland Yee, including racketeering and gun trafficking.

Silver’s arrest is expected to spark conversation among pro-gun
activists discussing the case. As is typically the case when someone
demanding to criminalize a right is himself found to be under suspicion
of self-serving real crime, the environment that allows corruption to
flourish also comes under scrutiny.

A Marengo man and his 14-year-old son were taken to a hospital after a gun accidentally fired while the man was cleaning it.

Marengo
Police Sgt. Paul Fritz said officers responded to the 400 block of Hale
Street at 5:20 p.m. to find the man and teen with gunshot wounds. Fritz
said the man was cleaning his gun when the weapon fired. The bullet
went through the man’s hand and hit the 14-year-old in the arm. The
bullet then ricocheted off his arm and struck the teen in the leg.

Fritz
said no major arteries were struck and both the man and teenager were
taken to Centegra Hospital – Woodstock to be treated.

No foul play is suspected, Fritz said, but an investigation is ongoing.

"No foul play," did you get that? Violating two or three of the major safety rules in front of his son, resulting in a negligent discharge and injury isn't considered foul play? It certainly should be.

The Texas gun debate has gone wild, wild west.A confrontation
between gun owners and a state lawmaker who later was given a state
security detail. Panic buttons installed in legislative offices. Guns
made and displayed at the Capitol gates.What many thought was a
slam-dunk in the Republican-controlled Legislature — allowing the open
carry of handguns in Texas — turned into a tempest in the opening weeks
of the session. And its chances of passing seemed to further diminish
when one of the state’s most outspoken conservatives flip-flopped on
whether it’s even a priority issue.The antics have left some gun-rights advocates shaking their heads.“(Open
carry) has been pushed off the rails by the nut jobs,” said Jerry
Patterson, a former Marine, gun enthusiast and open-carry advocate who
wrote the state’s concealed handgun license law as a state lawmaker in
the early 1990s.

You may not have noticed, but on Tuesday huge cheers boomed out of every nursery school classroom in the commonwealth.

Four-year-old boys
and girls wept in happiness and relief. They’d been so scared of losing
their gun rights they couldn’t concentrate on learning their ABCs.
Thankfully, the National Rifle Association came through for them again.

The source of their fear was a nasty bit of legislation introduced by (who else?) a liberal lawmaker from (where else?) Northern Virginia. His name is Sen. Adam Ebbin. He’s from Alexandria and obviously, he’s a Democrat.

Existing Virginia law allows a
child younger than 12 to use a gun under adult supervision. Had Ebbin’s
bill passed, it would have been illegal for an adult to allow a child
under 5 to use a gun under any circumstances.

In other words, Ebbin wants to
limit tykes’ gun rights. From this we can conclude either that 1) he’s
against hunting, the shooting sports and self-defense for preschoolers;
or 2) he dumbly forgot to consider those factors at all — in a state where hunting is a constitutional right.

What the heck is a 4-year-old
supposed to do when a child molester comes after him? Run? That won’t
work. The predator’s legs are longer.

Tattle to an adult? That’ll
increase chances the kid will grow up a sissy. He’ll be an object of
scorn and bullying when he gets to high school.

Newly available data for 2013 reveals that states with weak gun
violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the
highest overall gun death rates in the nation, according to a Violence
Policy Center (VPC) analysis of data from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and
Control.

Meanwhile, states with the lowest overall gun death rates have
lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence
prevention laws in the nation. However, even in these states the human
toll of gun violence is far above the gun death rate in other
industrialized nations.

The VPC analysis refers to overall gun death rates in 2013, the
most recent year for which data is available. A table of the states with
the five highest gun death rates and the five lowest gun death rates is
below. For a list of gun death rates in all 50 states, see http://www.vpc.org/fadeathchart15.htm.

States with the Five
Highest Gun Death Rates

States with the Five Lowest Gun Death Rates

Rank

State

Household
Gun Ownership

Gun Death Rate
per 100,000

Rank

State

Household
Gun Ownership

Gun Death Rate
per 100,000

1

Alaska

60.6
percent

19.59

50

Hawaii

9.7
percent

2.71

2

Louisiana

45.6
percent

19.15

49

Massachusetts

12.8 percent

3.18

3

Alabama

57.2
percent

17.79

48

New York

18.1 percent

4.39

4

Mississippi

54.3
percent

17.55

47

Connecticut

16.2 percent

4.48

5

Wyoming

62.8
percent

17.51

46

Rhode Island

13.3 percent

5.33

The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates in
2013 were Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming. Each of
these states has extremely lax gun violence prevention laws as well as a
higher rate of gun ownership. The state with the lowest gun death rate
in the nation was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, New York,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Each of these states has strong gun
violence prevention laws and a lower rate of gun ownership.